Review Copies and Timely Reviews

Earlier today, Rhianna Pratchett posted a message on Twitter asking if there were any game journalists looking for Steam codes for Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians, which looks like an amazing game.

I had thought about putting in a request, even though with the neglect and change of focus and the resulting loss quite a bit of my former audience, I likely wouldn't have gotten a code.

However, in thinking about the whole thing, I also realized a few things about myself.

One thing is, I don't like to rush through a game, and in general, I don't tend to play games in long sessions anymore, but because of the timely nature of a review, I would feel a lot of pressure to get through the game and get something written up. I like to take games slow, smell the roses and take things at my own pace, and rushing just doesn't appeal to me. I could conceivably play a game I was reviewing at my own speed, but I think I would feel stressed out thinking that I should be working on that game all the time.

And what if I couldn't finish it... because honestly there are a lot of games that I don't finish for one reason or another, and that is certainly a valid concern since it is a medium which gains a lot of its value from difficulty.

If I didn't like it, I would still feel obligated to play it until the end, and unlike movies and books which take a relatively short time to complete, a game could stretch on for hour after hour after hour, and if I was reviewing a new title, I'd have to keep going and see it through.

And truth be told, when I've spent my own money on a game, I think I may be inclined to review it more honestly and have a greater willingness to point out the flaws. I am going to tell you a story. Back in university, I was a reviewer for the paper there, and I was assigned someone's first novel, and it was terrible. Like no glimmer of hope that they were going to get better and it was a real slog reading it even though it was very short, and I was ready to give it a completely and brutally honest review. But I just happened to see my editor right before I was going to start writing it and she told me that the author was really looking forward to reading my review, and at that very moment, I was put in a position where I could not write the review the way I had planned. I went totally wishy-washy and didn't go for the jugular.

Because of that, I am worried that when presented with a situation where someone offers me a review copy, I may feel that same internal pressure to not go full-bore into something I really don't like because I know the developer is waiting for my review. And my last two reviews were for things that had come out relatively recently, so I think it hasn't been too bad.

At the moment, if I review a game here, I've finished it and likely enjoyed it, and looking back, that seems to be the general pattern of how I've written reviews for things in other media, like movies and such under the term "remembering". I don't think that is really a bad way to go.

Am I categorically saying I would never take a review copy? No. But I won't aggressively pursue one either. 

Spoiler Protocol: What To Expect In The Future

Due to the nature of some of the things that I am going to be discussing in the future, there are definitely going to be times when I am going to end up spoiling games (and other media) for people who haven't played them yet, and there is a line between being reasonable and being a prick that I have to be careful while treading.

The reason I am trying to come up with a plan this early on is because for many narrative games, the length of time you have to spend with the material to reach the conclusion of the story is many times longer than it takes to watch a movie, read a book or get caught up with a season of a television series. I would hate to deny someone an experience because they had a game in their backlog that they were going to get to soon and wreck it for them by talking about key details of that title in a way that they were not warned about. I've had that happen to me with games in this generation, and I don't really want to do that to another person.

So what I am think about doing is if I am writing an entry about a topic that leads me to talk about the narrative or character arc for a relatively recent game (and I am using that term in the loosest sense since with PC games and the current length of this generation of consoles, that encompasses a lot of titles), I am going to post a spoiler alert for the games I am talking about at the top of an entry that is about a general topic across a few games so you are forewarned. It would probably look something like this:

Potential Spoilers for: Title 1, Title 2, Title 3

At the same time, there are games that are so old and well-played that I think I should be safe in talking about without warning people. Like if I suddenly started talking about the plot of a game like Final Fantasy VII, I think I should be able to do so without posting a warning. And if it is older, like from the 8 or 16-bit era, I am not going to give a warning about spoilers.

If I discuss something from another medium, like perhaps a particular fantasy-themed show on HBO based on a series of novels, I will not bring up things that have not been on the television show yet and I will generally wait for people to have had a reasonable amount of time to watch the show in general from their DVR.If it is a topic which I think deserves to be talked about before that amount of time has passed, I will again preface the entry with the spoiler warning.

If I write a review, it will generally be spoiler free, and this has been my policy for a while, so nothing really changes in that regard. A "remembering" post however will probably have spoilers.

I tend to err on the side of caution in any case, so in general, you shouldn't be worried that I am going to spoil a game without you knowing about it first.

The Future of Culture Kills

To be blunt, I think I have been unhappy blogging about most of the things I used to for a while now and it has shown in how many posts I've been making since September 2011.

I've been watching progressively fewer movies over the years and getting invested time in fewer television shows, and I haven't been keeping track of modern music, so clearly I've let a lot of pop culture pass me by, and I've made my peace with that. The fact that I don't peruse as many sites about film and television anymore seems to reflect my changing priorities as well.

But for a "pop culture" blog, that does present a problem. Yes, I could go on mining nostalgia and panning for gold from my past with a lot of subjects, but I don't have the passion to do so anymore.

Then there is this whole Amanda Bynes thing. There was a time I would have been all over this situation and just ran with it for weeks, especially given the amount of coverage she is getting, and gaffe after gaffe she keeps making on Twitter, but a while back, ripping on celebrities stopped being fun anymore.I had thought about talking about it, but it just didn't seem right anymore.It doesn't interest me and to write about it would be doing both myself and you, my readers, a disservice.

But there is one subject which I've written about in the past that I have kept current on, even though I've been resistant to pursuing with the kind of intensity that matches my interest in it, and that is video games. There are so many entries over the past 7 years that I haven't written because I was afraid of alienating my readers by talking about gaming too much, so I tried to limit my posts on it, but as of late, it seems like it is the only thing I've really wanted to write about. It took me until this week to finally admit that to myself.

And I don't mean I just want to review games. I want to talk about them critically as a whole, and talk about my experiences as someone who plays games who has watched this medium develop from its early roots to where it is today in my lifetime. In the past, I expressed the feeling that the gaming industry and press needed to encourage more scholarship, more introspection about the work they produce and evaluate, and rather than sit idly doing little to contribute to those discussions, I could be starting some of my own. I've been a great fan of the Extra Credits have been putting out for a few years now, and they talk about a lot of the kinds of things I want to talk about.

I am not saying that I won't talk about television and movies on occasion, but I think the majority of my posts are going to be about video games from now on, and I think I am finally okay with that.

I guess I am just going to have to see how this all turns out. I haven't even decided if I am going to do a redesign or rebranding yet, but there is time to think about those questions as I work on refocusing this blog on the topics I really want to talk about in the future. Culture Kills has been around for 7 years now and I think I would have a problem totally abandoning the name though.

So.... What's Been Happening While I've Been Gone?

Yeah, I took a bit of a hiatus there, didn't I? I honestly didn't plan on being away from Culture Kills for that long, and things sort of got away from me.

I mean, it's been 3 months, which in some cases is a lifetime.

Like I have to admit it was sort of refreshing not having the self-applied pressure to blog every day or to simply come up with things to write about, because back in May, my well was running dry.

Strangely enough, the first time I was thinking about coming back was the morning of that terrible shooting in Aurora, but when I awoke that day and read about what had happened, it didn't seem like the appropriate time to be lighthearted. So I waited.

I am not going to make any promises, and I am not going to blog with the expectation that I am going to do so every day or even on some form of schedule. I am just going to play this whole thing by ear now and see what happens, because after six years of doing my thing here at Culture Kills, I think I may have earned myself a little flex time, and who knows... maybe the posts I make in the future will actually be better without the pressure of production.

BAH! I Hate The New Blogger Interface

While I was gone, Google got around to pushing me into their new interface, and I have just one question: Why Google why?

Who told you it was a good idea to change a very user friendly and, at times, aesthetically pleasing interface into a flat, characterless slate that just sucks my will to use it.

I should have known this was coming after the relatively recent changes to the commenting system, since those areas are now awful looking too.

Maybe there is something I've missed in the change, like maybe there are new classes in the CSS to play with to really start personalizing things.

As it stands now, this new Blogger interface is entirely uninspiring. I know some of you have been inflicted with it too. I just wish I could go back to the way it was before.

I was never one of those people who arbitrarily complained about change, but I honestly don't see what the benefit of this particular change is.

Goodbye IMDB Hit List

For many years, the Internet Movie Database has had the Hit List, a series of links on the front page to articles on blogs and larger sites which would be of interest to the general population of the IMDB. It was always fun reading through the links and finding new perspectives on things.

Well, yesterday, Associate Editor Heather Campbell announced that the Hit List would be no more, since there are now services which automatically provide content for them to share.

Having had two articles on the Hit List, I can say that it does provide quite a boost to traffic, and even when I was not on the receiving end of that bounce, it was always nice to go to the site every weekday and be presented with new perspectives and interesting articles from around the web.

I will truly miss the Hit List. Presenting the links on Facebook and Twitter just can't compete with that.

Stuff I Am Working On

Since I haven't been posting regularly, some of you may think I've run out of material. That is not the case.

I am just working on a few things that are taking up a little more time than a normal post and I thought I'd give you all a preview of some of the things I am working on.

-If I wrote... The Matrix Sequels. I have some ideas but I have to watch them again to make sure I am not missing anything.

-Remembering Streets of Fire. This has been on the backburner longer than my recent Remembering Commando piece, but I think now is the right time for it.

-Digital Distribution. I was very much against digital distribution of media and I was quite vocal about that, and I plan on explaining my change of heart.

And maybe, maybe I'll do a retrospective about a TV series like Samuraifrog has been doing with the various Star Trek series.

So it is basically longer stuff which requires a bit more planning.

What I Did On Valentine's Day

1. Played around with the new DLC for Dungeon Defenders... the Eternian Festival of Love. Yes, it looks like that, and yet I am still playing it to try to beat it.

2. Saw the preview for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Now I want to try to explode a tree with an axe.

SOPA and PIPA

The SOPA and PIPA bills would affect me personally if they passed, and they would adversely affect most of you as well.

This blog is in part built on mashups, remixes and music videos, all of which would be grounds to remove it from the internet if SOPA and/or PIPA passed. In addition, I have on occasion used materials for the purposes of criticism or commentary, which again would put this blog in the line of fire if someone decided they didn't like what I had to say or felt it was in the best interest of the company they represented to be very zealous in enforcing their copyright.

Even without those threats to this blog on an individual level, I would also have to worry about the potential problems Google and Blogger would face if those bills were to pass.

Because these bills also remove the protections that hosting sites have had in the past, they would be liable for the actions of their users, which means that even the most innocent of user transgressions would have serious consequences for the companies that make up the backbone of our community. That means that blogging as a whole would suffer, especially in political and pop culture/entertainment circles.

I'll get to the political part a little later, but let's start with the pop culture thing first since I do have some experience in that arena. Since as a group, we post videos a lot, it makes it difficult to do our hobby if we are always looking over our shoulder, afraid that the music video we posted hyping a new band, or the snippet of a movie shown on an entertainment program would end up killing our blog without due process or a chance to remedy the situation after being notified. In fact, you could be entirely innocent and have your blog become inaccessible because someone else on the same server is breaking copyright and because you share the same bit of webspace, you are punished. If for example, this blog was on the same server as a blog that featured a video where someone was discussing and showing clips from a Hollywood blockbuster, we could both be tarred with the same brush because we are sharing the same service.

Which, when you think about it, sort of sounds like what the RIAA did to a lot of people in their earlier battle against people for file sharing. They used dubious methods using IP addresses to try to coerce people into paying outrageous settlements when they had no case.

And with political blogs, think about how much footage of candidates and political stories appear on one of the major cable and radio news networks. Let's say you had a site or blog which was critical of one or more of these networks and you used footage from one of them to demonstrate your point as part of your rights under fair use in criticism and commentary. In the post-SOPA/PIPA world, the network in question could have your site taken down without going through legal channels and without you having the ability to defend yourself.

If you think what I am saying is far fetched, I need only mention the fact that last month the Universal Music Group had videos supporting Megaupload taken down when they had absolutely no legal right to demand that since they owned absolutely none of the content. And that was before they had the power granted to them by those two bills.

I've had my site scraped and had my content stolen by spamblogs many times in the past, so I know it sucks to have your intellectual property stolen. But these bills aren't the solution to that.

As Clay Shirky from The Guardian has noted, they will have the effect of forcing sites worldwide to be far more invasive than they currently are to protect themselves from being blacklisted.

SOPA and PIPA are bad for almost everyone and it is my hope that the mounting public pressure against them will kill them both.

I'm BACK!

Well, it has been a while since I've updated this blog, at least by my standards, but if you can't take a holiday once in a while, then what fun is the world? The fact that the break took place around the same time as Christmas, New Year's and the Steam Holiday Sale is likely purely coincidental.

Over the past two weeks or so, I've had some time to think about just what I want this blog to become.

I mean, I've been doing this for a long time at this point and to keep it interesting for myself, I have to perhaps freshen some things up. What is the point of doing the same thing over and over again. Like how many times can I condemn another remake or make fun of a celebrity (which in my defense, the latter I haven't been doing nearly as often as I once did).

And I posted a lot more pictures lately, but part of that was my way of posting without really writing anything, which is sort of cheap. Geeky pictures should be a supplement to written posts, not a substitute, especially since I wasn't developing that content myself.

So I have to get back to my roots, to the things that made this blog great at one point... you know, Chinese food containers, tales of karaoke and weird experiences playing games, remembering movies, and the like. I want things to be fun and informative like they used to be.

I just want things to be awesome again. How awesome?

I don't know... the image I have in my mind is of a nuclear-powered B-52 flown by bears dropping napalm on Nazi zombies and the Scientology Celebrity Center, which has a fireworks stand on the top floor, in the middle of the night.

So, there is still a lot of life left for Culture Kills... I just have to find it.

How I Am Feeling About Blogging Right Now

I think Lee Sargent hit a lot of the notes I am feeling at the moment in his recent 5th Anniversary post.

I just feel like I don't have as many interesting things to say these days as I once did.

I've lost a lot of passion for this over the past few months, and I don't know if it will fully come back.

What My Twitter Feed Says About Me

You know, if you were to judge my interests solely on what I said on Twitter, you'd probably conclude the following:

-All I do is watch wrestling (I haven't watched it really since late 2009)

-I'm really into Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Kate Beaton

-Everything I say is responding to or mentioning someone else... I don't really post new stuff

-And the gaming talk (OK, that isn't any different)

But yeah, I should probably put a little more time into my twitter feed since I haven't been doing a lot with it lately.

Blah!

Hey everybody.

Just in a bit of a malaise at the moment when it comes to blogging. But what else is new.

It could get rough over the next couple of weeks, and I thought it was only fair to give you a little warning because I could get a little cranky in some of my posts (but I assure you, not the comments).

I've Been Slacking Off When It Comes To Comments

I think I've been more than a bit lazy when it comes to answering comments here at Culture Kills.

I call your comments contributions, and they truly are, and I have been letting you all down by not responding in kind.

I feel terrible and I will try to do better in this regard in the future.

How Would You Type That?

I was downloading some logos for Football Manager last night, and as part of the process, you have to fill in a captcha test.

I think this one was a little too hard.

I just wish at the time that I had had the presence of mind to hit the audio portion of that to hear it try to read the above.

Anyone Else Noticing Some Blogger-Blogs Disappearing

Has anyone else noticed that some of the blogs on the Blogger network seem to be disappearing intermittently?

I noticed when I tried to go to Nostomanic, Kick Out Wrestling and a few other blogs, it is as if they don't exist for a period of time.

When it first started happening, I was worried that a few of my favorite blogs had closed shop.

Anyone else been having problems with accessing Blogger sites in the past couple days?

Year 34: The Pageant of the Supertransmundane AKA Happy Birthday To Me

Last year, I was a little introspective about my birthday, but this year... well, I am feeling a little more playful.

I like being playful. Because while I am sometimes dour in real life, in general I laugh a lot. I mean, a lot... and if you can laugh, well, then you find merriment in a lot of things, and that has value. I sometimes forget that, but if you can laugh, you can get through many problems.

I could say it was the best of times, or it was the worst of times, but you know, it is often both at the same time... a year full of both high expectations and hopes dashed... but I learned for both, and that has value too. Of course, I followed other things aside from the saga of Conan O'Brien...

But the thing I think I most want from this upcoming year is to be more like Terry Crews. Yes, I share a birthday with the awesomeness of Samuel L. Jackson, but I think Mr. Crews transcended that kind of cool this year. So if pictures of me bare-chested at the New York Stock Exchange pop up or of me knocking some buildings down, you'll know why. And if I was Terry Crews cool, I too could become the fictional President of the United States, and that is a dream worth pursuing.

I ended up having a decent year, met some amazing people, ate well... so aside from the minor quibbles everyone has, I really can't complain.

And what more could you want from a year?

I Bask in Reflected Glory

I have never been one for the spotlight. In fact, I am terrible at being the center of attention. However, I do rather well for myself when it comes to basking in reflected glory. I mean, even three years later being mentioned by name by then USA Today Tech_Space blogger (and all around awesome person) Angela Gunn for being the kind of blogger she likes to read. That same blurb then ended up being mentioned in a negative way on Michelle Malkin's blog, and I got a lot of hate shown in my direction too, and that still pleases me, because the hate of people you hate is delicious.

Anyway, someone I follow on Twitter named Tim Rogers put a call out for questions for his column at Kotaku the other day, and I thought it would be interesting since I loved his review of God Hand over at his site.

So I sent him a question and somehow it got picked up.

When the grouping you are in is prefaced by a question from Bryan Lee O'Malley of Scott Pilgrim fame, well, that is some nice company to be in. Granted my question/answer was way down the page, but I am not complaining because I am still part of the same article.

The fact that there are at least three 4 star reviews of God Hand on the site (and it comes up quite a few times in Rogers' Kotaku posts) made the second part of my question a little cheeky, because it was something I already knew (and it did come up in other answers as well).

But it was fun participating.

I almost wrote Lee an email telling him his Lucha Bear design had also covertly made it on Kotaku in the same article as Bryan Lee O'Malley, but I thought it would be easier to mention it here.

I'd also like to congratulate a recent Pageant of the Transmundane winner for reaching the IMDB front page. Congrats to John from The Droid You're Looking For for this honor (which I am getting some traffic from because of the Transmundanity badge... again, reflected glory).

(I also just found out my secret New Year's resolution has come true... when I put my name into Google, which I had to do to find the Michelle Malkin post, it now autocompletes. Woohoo! Hooray for small victories).

Gathering My Favorite Posts: Can you Help Me?

I am working on putting together a list of my favorite posts as an introduction to what I do here at Culture Kills. When I moved to the new Blogger, I had forgotten that I can actually do that now (along with the Blogger Burnout Advisory System)

Now I have a number of posts which I know will be on that page, but there might be a few which were the favorites of you, my readers, that I wouldn't have thought of.

So, are there any posts which you really liked?

Check Out My New Coalition of Awesomeness Post!

I might not be around too much this afternoon, as we are getting warnings about some severe wind storm action in this area, so I thought I would take this opportunity to hype something, because I am always the salesman. *wink*

The current theme over at The Coalition of Awesomeness is our own personal horrors and I chose one of my favorite movies to discuss: The Thing.

It is a cold, scary world. Bundle up!